[Thread] I'm Not in Oz Anymore

[nowimwicked]

Characters: Elphaba (OU), OPEN
Where: Plaza
When: After this journal entry.
Summary: The old meet and greet. New thread for new chars, or ninja in on her meeting someone else (with permission, please).
Warnings: Wicked Witchy-ness.

Comments

[nowimwicked]

That emerald-hued creature looked up at him as he stopped to stare, something that she was more used to than she ought to be. She felt the biting fire as the blue eyes settled on her, the handsome face still with thought as it looked at her. And Elphaba couldn't help but cringe, angular joints recoiling slightly as if his sight pained her. Then instinct settled in, and she stood taller again, all bony lines vanishing as some memory of Shiz University and the attention she received there on a regular basis grew as a focus for response in her mind.

"What! Never seen someone green before? Never seen anything like me?" Her laughter was low and chuckling, trying to be a old hag's cackling, but failing for she had not the age nor the capacity for evil to carry it out. Elphaba's brow furrowed and her fingers tightened on the book clutched in her hands. For a moment she looked more her own number of years, perhaps younger, showing her crushed innocence.

Her brown eyes were discerning. "They say I can turn a whole town into frogs. They say my very presence can blight crops and kill livestock. They say I carry my soul in a familiar and that I fly on the front edge of thunderstorms." The words were half-chant, half-question. "They say that I eat men's hearts to fuel my magic powers."

[yeah_i_can_fly]

Tony went into what Pepper might have called "Stark businessman defensive reaction number one" at that long list of fallacies. He went rigidly stoic and stared down at her with a superior gaze. "Well, I guess it's a good thing I'm very well known for my lack of heart," he replied with dripping sarcasm that bit deep into the flesh. His tone, indeed, was seriously lacking in heartfelt emotion other than scorn.

"And it just so happens," he continued with that superior line of fashion, "that I have in fact seen someone like you before. And much more hideous for that matter. You'll find you're not so unique in this place. There are plenty like you here."

[nowimwicked]

Elphaba gave a rough noise, something between a snort and a huff. "I wouldn't eat any human heart - haven't you heard? They're notorious inconsistent and often rotten to the core." Her gaze tilted slightly, as if she could possibly see through his facade of petty meanness. "I'd rather choke on a fish bone." The witch's eyes narrowed faintly. "Though not the bones of a Fish." There was a distinct difference in the way she said the second version of the same word.

"Are you sure?" There was a hint of a smile on her lips. "Maybe you should bring your hideous friend here for comparison. I reserve judgment until I see who you're speaking of." Her voice was dry, but slightly amused. "I've noticed that there are quite a few that make me seem almost boring." Her brown eyes flickered darkly. "Ha...I might even grow jealous at this lack of attention. I'm not used to not being the topic of conversation when I enter a room." Her smile bloomed suddenly, but it was bitter and wistful.

[yeah_i_can_fly]

Tony tipped an imaginary hat to the green witch. "Indeed. They are." A pause, but he decided to ignore the "fish vs. Fish" concept and stuck with familiar snark. "It would be undoubtedly safer to swallow the fish bone than a human heart."

"Oh, boy. Now I have to decide which hideous 'friend' to show you? I think I'd rather just continue the day without tackling such a hard decision," he replied. If anything instead of truly being spiteful now he was just plain having fun. It is a mixed up world inside the mind of one Anthony E. Stark.

He tilted his head to the side almost in mimicry of her earlier gesture. "Et tu?" he asked with a more mischievous smirk of his own. "Granted, when I walk into a room--first, it's the woman who pay the most attention; second, the men are the jealous ones; and third, all of it is a most fortuitous sensation rather than something of loath and scorn." The smirk lifted slightly into a mean little smile.

[nowimwicked]

"That depends on how many friends you keep company with. Though if you're in the habit of calling them hideous, likely they're not really your friends any longer? Perhaps you're lying...perhaps your making it up. I can't imagine one such as you lingering with anyone less than attractive." A jib to counter a jib, it seemed only fair.

The green woman chuckled, and there was actually a hint of real humor in it. Bantering brought the life back to her. "Different than I. When I walk into a crowd it is the children that notice first - pointing and laughing, followed by the horrified parents, and then the old folks mumbling on about the curse of sin. If I'm lucky they use it as an object lesson about the punishments visited upon disobedient children..."

The brown eyes drifted, losing some clarity. "The other times aren't of consequence."

[yeah_i_can_fly]

Tony snorted and brought up his hands to perform air quotes. "Maybe I should have made it clear with gestures when I said the word 'friend.' You're right, the hideous ones tend not to be so much friends as vague acquaintances. And not very liked ones. What can I say?" he continued with a shrug, "I'm very vain."

There was practically a 360 here in his attitude towards her. "That seems kinda rude," he said, sincerely it seemed, too. "Besides the color, you don't really look like an ogre. It's not like you're that scary. Maybe ate too many vegetables..."

[nowimwicked]

Her disgust at his words, faked or otherwise, wrinkled the witch's emerald nose with clear distaste. Even for a joke, his explanation was far too much like those she had heard at Shiz, honest statements those. Even Glinda had said much the same at one point - Glinda...how long since she thought back on those days? Did their dark beauty still haunt her old friend as they did her? The contrast? The bitter result of their lives? Though perhaps the 'Good Witch's' life was disappointing in a different way. Neither of them had turned out to be the successes they had dreamed of being.

"'Don't really', how terribly kind of you." Elphaba said, sarcasm caked on as thickly as an elderly woman's rouge. "No wonder the women flock to your side...you're full of witty flattery." Her teeth clicked shut as she finished flaying him, brown eyes showing slight regret for the runaway nature of her tongue. In slight apology she tried to lighten the mood, sought to repair some damage from the banter that had moved too far. Not for Tony's sake - but for the beautiful man's memory that he reminded her of.

"Surely you can come up with something better than 'vegetables'." She tucked the broom at her side, making it not so much of a possible weapon as more of a walking stick that she leaned upon. "It must not include toadstools or elf circles, either, I have heard enough of those wild speculations for several lifetimes."

[yeah_i_can_fly]

Tony's eyes narrowed thinly, briefly, at Elphaba's dripping sarcasm. But really the statements weren't unheard of by the businessman and, indeed, he usually swam in them to his own delight because he could literally fill an ocean full of such statements if they were all written down on paper and then tossed into place. Half of his life was devoted to the various ways he could accumulate such remarks. The other half spent in winning the hearts of women all around.

And then there was that one portion that he spent his true heart's content in genius building, making, and creating whatever came to his brilliant and chaotic yet purposeful mind. That was another story.

No, the expression on his face at those words readily turned to amusement more than anything else because the facade that was his face came so naturally it seemed nothing could penetrate it. "Indeed--and wouldn't you know it? They really do."

He shrugged idly. "I'm sure I could come up with a whole slew of scientific nonsensical babble that would leave you in shock--but why bother? I'm not really into biology." Pause. "We'll chalk it up to simple genetics and leave it at that, shall we?"

[nowimwicked]

"Life science was my main area of study at Shiz University." Elphaba said reflectively, digging up the past despite the flare of warning that beat against her heart. It was lucky that this man, though handsome, lacked the shining blue diamonds - he didn't fully possess the heady-dreadful poison that would remind her of that one of warmest memory.

"Genetics and breeding were of special interest to me, I assume you can discern why." Her smile was humorless. "But for the most part I was helping my professor, Dillamond was his name, he was a Goat. We were trying to find the difference between Animals and animals, and their relation to mankind." The brown eyes glittered. "That was, until he was murdered." Her jaws clamped shut then, for along with getting Fiyero killed, she had also never managed to avenge her friend and colleague.

[yeah_i_can_fly]

Tony paused for a second. Actually, she would understand what he was talking about--that is, if 'life science' was the same sort of biology he was talking about. He mentally shrugged. That didn't have to be a big surprise. Plenty of people were smart--plenty of people studied hard to be so--but just because they could understand what he said didn't mean they were as smart as him though. Like he said: biology really wasn't his thing.

He definitely could see. That was quite obvious. And he thought it wasn't a bad reason to go into such things. At least she had a reason. Like him. He was just good at what he did. That was all.

He didn't understand all the background allusions going on here, although he could definitely tell there was something being said in between the lines, and the whole "murder" statement went a long way... but again he ignored that. He would, however, now ask about the the difference between the double words. "...What's with the 'Fish' and fish, 'Animal' and animal thing going on here?"